Curmudgeons Of The Week

Music isn’t always the food of love, as Plymouth grandparents, Robert and Christine Fox, have found out. They have been threatened with an ASBO – in some parts still a badge of honour I’m told – for playing their music too loud. What has got their neighbours’ goat is their predilection for the oeuvre of Roy Orbison and Fleetwood Mac which they play, doubtless at volume, in their garden.

Whilst neither artist are much too my taste – Pete Green Fleetwood is OK – I wouldn’t have thought that either would cause too much offence. But there’s nowt so queer as folk, it seems.

This curious and frankly sad story got me thinking. What sort of music would so annoy you that you would be roused to complain or, conversely, to what type of music would you subject your neighbours to rouse their ire?

I always find a bit of Miles Davis’ atonal masterpiece, Bitches Brew, has them running to the hills. Alternatively, a bit of Iggy Pop and the MC5 always gingers things up. The younger generation might turn tail when subjected to the wall of saccharine that is Tony Bennett.

And I would be raising the white flag and dialling Environmental Services if I was subjected for too long to the bagpipes.